Aurora still praying and paying for recovery one year later

Jasmine Christman, left, and her parents, Yulanda Vega Jordan and Jack Jordan, friends of Aurora theater shooting victim Jessica Ghawi, comfort one another during a day of remembrance at Aurora Municipal Center on Saturday. (Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post)

The first 911 call from the Aurora movie theater on July 20, 2012, came at 12:38 a.m. No one is sure how long it took Kevin Quinonez to gather his cellphone and wits to make the first recorded 911 call as shots and tear-gas canisters exploded in a darkened Theater 9 where "The Dark Knight Rises" blared.

The affidavit for the arrest of the suspect, 25-year-old James Holmes, says police arrested him just outside the theater exit, in the parking lot near his car, at 12:40 a.m.

In the two minutes or so Holmes spent firing inside Century Aurora 16, he took 12 lives, caused a miscarriage, injured at least 70 others — at least 15 are permanently debilitated — and created immeasurable agony for victims' families and friends.

By official estimates, these couple of minutes directly affected a thousand people at the movies that night. For everyone else, the shooter transformed the pure fun of a languid summer night spent in a cool, dim theater into a national nightmare.

Aurora leaders say they refuse to have their community identified by this crime — they refuse to be viewed through the cracked lens of a mass killer.

Some survivors and victims' families have pressed media not to name or write about the shooter — even infamy is too good for him, they say.

And yet few can argue that he hasn't changed thousands of lives.

You can't put a price on suffering, although attorneys will try in civil lawsuits holding not only Holmes responsible, but also the movie theater owners and management, as well as University of Colorado Denver staffers who, they say, should have recognized and defused the threat posed by Holmes, then a graduate student and a patient of one of the school's psychiatrists.

The wounded collectively have spent more than 600 days in hospitals, which, along with mental health facilities, have footed more than $4 million in "charity care." Metro hospitals pledged not to charge patients for any immediate hospital care they received.

In the first year, the mass killing has robbed well over $3 million from government and school coffers (Holmes' public defense costs weren't released to The Denver Post), and plucked much more than $5 million from private donors who wanted to help victims.

Cinemark Century Theaters spent $1 million to renovate the movie complex, which was shuttered for six months and lost an estimated $3 million in revenue, according to financial filings.

Aurora theater-shooting victim Caleb Medley and his wife, Katie, place flowers for the memorial during a day of remembrance at Aurora
Municipal Center on Saturday. People gathered outside the Aurora Municipal Center to mark the first anniversary of the deaths of 12 people
and the injury to 70 others in the theater shooting that forever changed an entire community. (Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post)

If the known, documented and disclosed costs are added up, the shooting has cost society upward of $17 million in the first year— a very conservative estimate. And no one can predict whether that amount eventually will double, triple or worse.

Community comes together

Throwing dollars at the myriad problems rippling from the Aurora movie theater shooting, while necessary and correct, doesn't light the darkness of that midsummer night.

That has required an opposite and unequal reaction.

"We threw as much good at the bad as we could think of," Aurora Public Schools spokeswoman Georgia Duran said of the communitywide response to the shooting. "There has been beauty come out of this. Just the way we treat each other is different — more tender."

The shooting knit together the community of more than 335,000 more tightly than ever, city leaders say.

"From the most terrible thing you can imagine happening came the most beautiful things you can see in human nature," said city spokeswoman Kim Stuart, for whom the aftermath of the massacre became a fully consuming job for about half a year.

"Everyone stepped up to do whatever they could do," she said.

Community leaders have been adamant in claiming that the incident hasn't changed Aurora. Yet others acknowledge the event has acted on everyone's psyche.

"Every time I think about that day, I get a pit in the bottom of my stomach. I think that is true for almost everybody," Gov. John Hickenlooper said in a statement. "Not every wound has healed or ever will heal. But our community — and our collective will to overcome bad with good — is stronger one year later."

The shock waves of the shooting reached far beyond one city or even Colorado.

The shooting was a pivotal moment for anyone who likes to go to the movies, Calvary Chapel of Aurora Pastor Ed Taylor said. Of his 3,000-member congregation, he said, 47 people were either in Theater 9 or the one next to it, Theater 8, the night of the shooting. None was seriously wounded, but many, including one of his assistant pastors, were badly shaken.

It's likely many more people are now anxious in public gathering places such as theaters, schools, malls and churches — all have been the sites of mass killings, Taylor said. Yet evil shouldn't win, he quickly added; good people should take these places back for themselves.

For all the horror of that night and the struggles of its aftermath, people directly involved say compassion and courage ruled the day.

"The devil is mad! Aurora is still here!" Bishop T.D. Jakes yelled to roars of approval from a packed crowd at a Wednesday night prayer service at The Potter's House of Denver.

But not everyone is still here. Twelve families paid the ultimate price.

Dave Hoover, whose 18-year-old nephew, Alexander "AJ" Boik, died that night, said his sister Theresa, AJ's mom, and the whole family are riding the rising and falling waves of life after the shooting.

"A couple of weeks ago, we were laughing and joking and trying to get on with life," Hoover said. "This week, everyone has run across the rocks again. So much was lost that night. So many lives lost or changed. So many kids went to the movies and will never be the same again."

For Tom Sullivan, July 20 is the anniversary of his son's death but also his son's birthday, and that is something he will always celebrate — perhaps by going to the movies. That was his son's tradition.

Alex Sullivan was 27, newly married, happy in his restaurant work and a huge fan of the movies when he was fatally shot.

His father isn't troubled that this first anniversary of his death won't be marked by dedication of a stone monument or other permanent Aurora memorial.

"Alex is everywhere," Tom Sullivan said. "I don't need a memorial to remember him. I know where he is. I can feel him everywhere. I've been building a memorial to him in my heart since the day he was born."

The ledger

The entire Aurora community and the nation will be paying for the minutes of mayhem for decades to come.

For those wounded in the shooting, litigation about compensation could drag on for years or be settled quickly.

The civil suits filed so far don't specify what compensation ultimately will be asked, but documents for a dozen plaintiffs indicate that in each case, damages sought exceed $750,000.

Almost every person suing has lost work because of medical needs and attendance at court proceedings, said lawyer Christina Habas, who represents four victims.

Several victims may never be able to work again. Some people lost much more than a livelihood. Ashley Moser, 26, was paralyzed from the waist down and lost her unborn child. Her 6-year-old daughter Veronica Moser-Sullivan died in the carnage.

"Many have significant emotional problems," Habas said. "Some couldn't leave their houses for days, weeks, months, half a year. They avoid crowds, including mass transit. There is a permanent loss of security, of privacy for them. There is physical impairment, continuing medical expenses and pain.

"Some will have problems develop in the future they don't even know exist yet," Habas said.

New York lawyer Marc Bern — whose client list includes 25 victims, the living and families of the dead, in several lawsuits against theater owners — has clients whose medical bills he predicts eventually will run to hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions.

"Everyone will certainly require continual psychological treatment for the rest of their lives. ... They are suffering tremendously," Bern said. "They are desperately trying to move on with their lives."

In general, shooting victims suffer about $50,000 in medical costs each, according to a Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation analyst quoted by The New York Times after the Boston Marathon bombing.

That's just an average, of course, and the huge variance in Aurora victims' experiences is a story told in small slips of paper turned into the governor's office by Nov. 1, to tally up their share of the Aurora Victim Relief Fund.

"Were you hospitalized overnight?" the compensation committee asked. The answers come after a box checked "Yes." Number of days and nights in hospital: 18 for one. 21 for another. 4. One month and 3 days. 35. 87.

Joshua Nowlan, now 32, has undergone six surgeries to repair wounds in his right forearm and left calf. Through it all, he said, he has learned to lean on people. And he has never stopped going to the movies.

"I was never one who liked to ask for help," said Nowlan, a Navy veteran. "But it's the love and support of family and friends that matter. Don't hesitate to look for it because family and friends will do anything for you. They want to see you happy."

Nowlan made it back to his job as a network engineer a couple of months ago.

"I'm really exited to go back to work. I still deal with the pain all day long, but I'm a stubborn guy," the single father said. "I have medication for the pain, but I don't want to be a pill-popper my whole life."

His worst loss in the months after he was wounded, Nowlan said, were missed sessions of roughhousing with his sons, now 8 and 10. They played board games instead.

"I still can't wrestle around, but we'll go on a bike ride," he said. "I can play a little basketball. I can't run. I can't really throw a baseball back and forth."

Unknown costs of medical and mental health treatments stretch years into the future for many. The known hospitalization costs so far have been staggering. And there is a long list of other hard costs.

Hospitals

• Children's Hospital Colorado said the charges for victims treated were more than $280,000.

• University of Colorado Hospital, which took a great number of patients and some of the most seriously wounded, said the discounts and write-offs for Aurora patients amounted to more than $2 million.

"UCH has already written off significant portions of our patients' bills, and both commercial insurance companies and Medicaid have gone to great lengths to take care of these patients," spokesman Dan Weaver said. "As a result of these and other, ongoing efforts, none of these patients will have to pay an out-of-pocket bill for their in-patient hospital stay at UCH."

• Medical Center of Aurora and Swedish Medical Center, both part of the HealthONE group, treated 27 patients from the shooting and provided nearly $500,000 in charity care, a spokesman said.

"For patients we treated from the tragic events at the Aurora theaters, HealthONE limited or eliminated personal financial responsibility for the care provided as appropriate to each patient and the circumstances of these individuals," Dan Davidson said.

Other health organizations also put out significant resources in the wake of the shooting.

• Aurora Mental Health Center said nobody in the movie theater that night, nor their family members, nor first responders or their family, would pay anything out-of-pocket for counseling services.

Aurora Mental Health also offered free care to any city resident under 21 and immediate family. The costs were high: $1.4 million, much of it spent in the first two weeks on 24/7 walk-in centers and hotlines.

The center has received $463,000 back so far in donations and community support for those efforts, said spokeswoman Cindy Bohl.

City of Aurora

By May, the city of Aurora had shouldered costs of nearly $740,000.

Department of Justice law enforcement and emergency assistance grants are expected to cover almost $314,000. The city will cover the remaining $425,000 using general fund reserves.

The city's response went far beyond the efforts of traditional first responders, Stuart said. Even city code officers sat side by side with staff from Access Aurora to man a 24-hour call center established to provide information to callers from all over the country.

Aurora's costs have come from things as diverse as hosting vigils and paying police overtime. The vigils cost more than $78,000 and required much time from parks and rec staff. Police overtime ran to more than $393,000 as officers responded to and investigated the crime.

City costs will include the eventual archiving by the Aurora History Museum of items of tribute left by the public at a spontaneous memorial in a dirt lot near the theater. The dusty crosses, photos, T-shirts, rosaries and other objects of tribute have been wiped clean. Hundreds of teddy bears must be dry-cleaned before being permanently stored.

Planning for a permanent memorial has not progressed to the point that costs are estimated, Stuart said.

7/20 Recovery Committee

The 7/20 Recovery Committee was picked from a cross section of the community to help ensure shooting victims got the information they needed and access to resources available to help them. For example, several programs on healing from trauma were held at the Aurora Central Library.

Former United Way executive Rich Audsley became the committee's coordinator, beginning Aug. 28 and working for seven months. Through March 31, he had been paid $96,509 for his work — funded through the Colorado Organization for Victim Assistance by a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office for the Victims of Crime.

"I worked with the understanding that my time would not be reimbursed if a federal crisis grant was not awarded," Audsley said.

The Governor

Hickenlooper's office became involved by co-founding the Aurora Victim Relief Fund with a large nonprofit called the Community First Foundation. The fund quickly drew $5 million from private donors and just as quickly drew fire from more than a dozen victims and family members who believed it was not managed transparently nor accessible to families that needed immediate financial relief.

"I don't know if I can quantify the hours staff spent on the Aurora shooting," Hickenlooper spokesman Eric Brown said. "In the days and even weeks after, it was all-consuming. There were, as they say, no hard costs, just hard time."

Heated criticism of both the governor and Community First Foundation led to Hickenlooper bringing in nationally known attorney Kenneth Feinberg, who has served as paymaster for victims from Sept. 11 to the Boston Marathon bombing, to handle the local fund.

The Paymaster

"Ken Feinberg paid all his own expenses — airfare, hotels and meals," Brown said. "It was his gift to Colorado."

Feinberg estimated his expenses in administering the Aurora Victim Relief Fund were around $10,000. He charged nothing for his time, but he spent the equivalent of 15 days on it. The relief fund's final balance was $5.3 million. It closed Nov. 15.

Feinberg distributed $220,000 to each family that lost a loved one and to the five claimants who suffered either permanent brain damage or permanent physical paralysis. Six people hospitalized for more than 20 days received $160,000 each. Two hospitalized between a week and three weeks received $91,680 each. And 13 hospitalized between one and seven days received $35,000 each.

For its early role in setting up and handling the relief fund, Community First Foundation received months of unrelenting, bitter criticism from some frustrated victims who felt the process was neither transparent nor responsive.

The nonprofit waived all its management fees, and it paid third-party processing fees of $20,333.95 for donations made online with credit cards.

Aurora Public Schools

Schools are not first responders, "but we are the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and you name it," said John Barry, recently retired Aurora Public Schools superintendent.

Barry, a survivor of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon, said the school district's role after the movie massacre was much larger than most know. In the hours after the shooting, Gateway High School served as the gathering place where police interviewed witnesses and families waited for news of missing loved ones.

The district estimated at least 150 with direct ties to Aurora schools as students, parents and staff had been at the Century Aurora 16 on July 20.

The district's massive efforts include hiring a full-time recovery coordinator and creation of an APS Disaster Recovery website. Schools hosted fairs where information and trauma counseling were also conveniently available so people didn't have to ask for help. It was just there.

The school district spent about $310,000 on this work and also added six security positions at schools at a yearly cost of $300,000.

"We have done our best. But some things are lost that can't be fixed," Barry said. "The children lose innocence. They get faced with some very stark realities. We had to have talking points for our kindergartners. You can't keep it from them."

One parent told Barry his young child didn't want to go see movies anymore because "that's where they shoot people."

University of Colorado

By the end of May, the University of Colorado had spent more than $1 million in legal fees to defend Holmes' psychiatrist and other medical care providers, a campus police officer and members of the Behavioral Evaluation and Threat Assessment, or BETA, team.

The university had spent almost $85,000 on public-relations consultants. Its campus police had spent about $52,000 for added security, including bomb searches and overtime pay for officers.

Court costs

Before Holmes even had entered his plea of not guilty by reason of insanity June 4, the 18th Judicial District Court in Arapahoe County had spent more than $36,000 for a full-time clerk hired specifically for the case and more than $5,000 to compensate legal research attorneys.

The District Attorney's Office had spent, beyond the time of already salaried staff, more than $230,000 in prosecution of the Holmes case, but expected grants and reimbursements from public funds to cover all but about $10,000.

For the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office, the overtime costs associated with security for Holmes were more than $121,000 by early May.

Sheriff J. Grayson Robinson said he could not disclose the office's cost for Holmes' medical and psychiatric treatment during incarceration because it could significantly affect his case given his plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.

The Public Defender's Office, which is representing Holmes, would not disclose any extra expenses incurred beyond in-house staff salaries, citing of attorney-client privilege and an order issued by then-case Judge William Sylvester on July 23 limiting pretrial publicity.

The Colorado Organization for Victim Assistance also declined to provide the total amount of money it has distributed to victims of the crime, including the 50 or so wounded in the theater and the families of the 12 slain.

COVA executive director Nancy Lewis said the organization probably will provide a figure in August, after a scheduled audit of its records. Attorneys for COVA, responding to an open-records request said "only private, donation-based and nonprofit-sourced money had been used for victim assistance (in) the Aurora tragedy."